Speaker 1: I love social studies. I absolutely just love it. I can go off for hours. The kids know it. I'm like, hey, how about that Syria, Ms. Williams? And I'll just go. I'll talk about politics, economics, history, anything. I absolutely love it. I'll sit on the beach in Hawaii and read a book about geopolitical economics in South Africa or something. And that's exciting to me. And so a handful of my students love it as well, that they get right into the conversations. And these are the kids that follow current events and love it. But then there's the kids who put their head down and kind of check out as I'm all excited about whatever we're talking about. And I always felt kind of guilty as I'm talking about Middle East policy or fiscal decisions by the government. And then what they're ending up having is homework because I'm like, well, we didn't get to the assignment today, so do it for homework. And I knew most of the students were learning, but I wanted all of the students to be learning. And I wanted to fix that situation to get more of my students engaged. So as a social studies teacher, my homework every night is to watch the news. And so I actually watch three different news programs every night. And every Sunday night, I watch 60 Minutes. Good thing I like this stuff. So one night, as I was watching 60 Minutes, they had a segment on the Khan Academy, which I had seen before. But this time, it actually clicked. And what it is is it's a flipped classroom approach to instruction. And something just really caught my attention. It probably was the phrase the interviewer had said. If they get stuck, they can get one-on-one help from the teacher. Less lecturing, more interaction. And that's exactly what I wanted is to have that interaction and to give the kids that passion. There's nothing more exciting to me than to have a kid come in, especially those 10-2s that are just like, I hate socials. And then at the end of the year, they're excited. And they're engaged. And they're participating. That is so exciting for me. And so I want to tell you guys about this flipped classroom and how it works and how upfront it is a lot of work. But in the end, it's just so worth it. And so what you do is you take the lecture component. And again, my lectures, I would plan for half an hour. They'd usually be about 50 minutes. I'd look at the clock and go, oh, we're out of time. So you shorten it down into 10-minute videos. And the videos are what's for homework. And then the students have time to work on their projects in class where I can give them that feedback and let them know how they're doing versus them working on the project at home and doing it wrong and bringing it to class. And I actually have a sample of that in my classroom that I have this beautiful diorama. It's like this big. It's huge. And it's this amazing war scene. And there's hills and trees and tanks and everything, little soldiers everywhere. And it was a fail because the assignment was to visually demonstrate the Cold War. There's nothing in the diorama about the Cold War. And of course, I let her redo the assignment. She'd worked really, really hard. But I have that in my room to show the students that you could work really hard on something. But if you're going in the wrong direction, all of that time then is spent not getting to the goal that you wanted to get to. Whereas if she'd been working on that in the classroom, I could have given her that feedback and been like, OK, so how does this fit with the Cold War? So this is why you call it the flipped classroom. In addition to this, the videos that I've created are an amazing review tool that kids can use to come back to. And that's important because there is a foreign language to social studies. It really is a different language. And I love this phrase. The fiscal and monetary policies of a Keynesian economy during a recession just scares the pants off people. And they're just like, that is foreign language. But I have a video now. And so if the kid had missed the lecture that day or if they just didn't understand the lecture that day before, that was it. You're hooped. You better look it up in the textbook. You better try and figure it out. But we're moving on. Now they can go back and watch the video again and again and again until they can really understand that concept. That really just allows for the learning at any time, any pace, any path, any place. It really does. It fits with that perfectly. And so I've heard the phrase journey several times already this morning. And that's really what I thought of is that this is my journey or my hike into the flipped classroom. And while it was work, just like a hike, it was so worth it, just like at the end of a hike where you have that amazing, beautiful view. And so I started with my grade 12 classroom last year. The first thing I had to figure out was just how I was actually going to make videos. And so it took a long time for me to kind of figure out my process. And I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here about how I do it. But if you want to know, I can definitely fill you in. And I really appreciated all of the advice that so many people in the division were able to give me. In the end, I was able to use the technology that's right on our Mac computers. And I am not a technical person at all. Now, the first video I made took me eight hours to make a 10-minute video. I'm down to five. And I know that still sounds like a long time. And again, it's because I'm a little type A. And so I'm a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the videos. But that five hours is worth it because then I can come back to it again and again and again. And I think, of course, the perfectionist in me is, in the future, you need to fix this. And YouTube has this cool thing now where you can actually embed quizzes into the YouTube video. And I totally want to do that. But for right now, I just got to get the videos out. So it's kind of like a long, hard hill on a hike. You got to get that stuff done. The next hill I experienced was getting the kids to buy in. Because a lot of times, they would just kind of passively watch the video once and then come to class and not really have that understanding. They just kind of expected the same old routine in the class that I'd be putting notes on the board. And they started to realize there weren't any notes in my class. And they started to realize how valuable the videos were for finding information for their projects. And that's a really important part of the flipped classroom. You can't just go, well, I gave worksheets for homework, so they'll do the worksheets in class. No, it needs to be those inquiry projects where they're actually seeing the value of the information they learn from the videos and from the discussions we have in class. So quite often, we would start a class with reviewing the video, reading an article, having a short debate, something like that, and then giving them time to work on their projects. And I'm very transparent. I actually show them my unit plans and tell them, OK, shut me up at 1130 because that's your project time. And if you want me to keep talking about Syria, I will. But your project time starts at 1130. And that way, it really helps them to kind of see that real-world application. So there was a really great moment. I guess you could call it going downhill on the trail. But of course, you don't want to use the term downhill in an idea for education. But it's when students started to use their smartphones to access the videos during class time. It was a little disarming at first. You all say, my voice doesn't sound like that. And I've learned, actually, it does, because I can hear myself all over the room. And what I really loved was I'd broken them of Google. They think Google is the end-all, be-all, and it's not. And a lot of them, for their first project, Googled it. And they'd be like, Ms. Williams, this took me eight hours. And I'd be like, well, did you use the class resources? Well, no, I Googled it. Yeah. If you Google individualism and collectivism, you're going to get a couple billion hits. So good luck with that. And so the students realized that there was a purpose to coming to class, to being part of the class, because that was giving the information to help them find the answers for their projects and their research. Now, there were things that I worried about, like how I was going to condense a 40-minute lecture into a 10-minute video. And what I was really kind of sad at first was I wasn't going to be able to tell all my stories, that I have all these great little stories to tell. And I thought it was actually going to be a really tough part, but actually I found out it was awesome, because I could tell all of my stories, but to individual groups. And they were listening, instead of part of the class listening and part of the class sleeping. I could actually have that one-on-one interaction as I explained to them how the Hunger Games relates to the ancient Roman Empire, or the chair socks lady that perfectly shows how capitalism actually works, because she wouldn't make chair socks unless somebody was buying them. It's true. There's people that have chair socks. So another rocky part of my pathway was trying to get all of the students engaged. You know, you hear all the time that if you use project-based learning and if you use the flip classroom, you'll engage all of your students. And that's not true. That my students who were already engaged and were part of those great discussions, they blew me away with the things they were doing. My average students blew me away as well with the things they were doing. But it was my less engaged students, my students who struggled, that actually found this really, really difficult, because it's a lot more self-directed. And so I did a lot of check-ins to check with their progress. And even then, some of those less engaged, less academic students have a hard time getting those things done and meeting those check-ins. It's not a miracle cure-all by any means. They quite often just want to, just give me the textbook questions, please. Can you just give me a fill-in-the-blank worksheet? And they'd be like, because I don't want to have to think. I just want to find the answers. And I'd be like, yeah, that's my goal. I want you to just passively find answers and put them in a blank. Don't think, just memorize. And so it kind of frustrates them a little bit. But what can help those students is the fact that I can also get their parents engaged in the process, that the parents have access to the same class resources that the students have, that it's all open. And so that way, when I have a conversation with the parents, they can be watching the videos, and they can see all the resources that are available. And so they get empowered as well to try and help their student with all the resources. So another great moment came at the end of the first semester. So sticking with the hiking analogy, you can kind of say it's that lookout that's often halfway up the mountain there. And it was as the diploma exams were coming in, of course. The students are all worried and asking about review tutorials. And one of the students said he really needed help remembering the philosophers. He just couldn't really keep them all straight. And before I even said anything, one of the students said, oh, just go to video number three. Remember, that's the one on the philosophers. And I was like, yay. This is awesome. You're actually doing self-directed learning. And I did end up doing one tutorial, but that was it. I just said, you guys watch the videos. And then on this afternoon before the exam, ask me any questions that you're still not sure of and see if I can explain it in a little bit of a different way for you. But they were able to access it, again, at their time and at their pace. The next semester, I kept refining the lessons in the classroom to be complimentary. And my website, I'm loving it now because it's become this repository for anything that I find useful in the classroom. It used to be that if I found a really cool website, I'd print it off, put it in my binder, and then I'd hope I'd remember to come back to it the next time I taught that lesson. Well, now it's there. And so sometimes during class, I'll say, OK, let's go on the class website. I'm going to pull up a couple of things that we're going to discuss together in class. But no matter what, they always have access to all of these things that I have found is really helpful in their learning. And so it's this great repository that everybody has access to. And of course, there's uphill battles. Those weaker students, again, the second semester one became so frustrated with me. She started yelling at me. She was like, you're not doing your job. You're making us go to the website to see what we miss when we skip class. And you expect us to learn on our own. You need to do your job. I was like, bring it. I dare you to complain to someone. Go tell your mom how I'm making you be a self-directed learner. So again, it's those students that are used to the British imperial model of memorize this, do this, do this. It's sometimes a little tough for them to kind of reach outside of that comfort zone. So at the end of the year, as I finished the hike of piloting this flipped classroom, it was so worth it. Yeah, the hours I put into making the videos are ridiculous. My husband makes fun of me as I'm coming home late at night. He's like, you know, you can only win that award once. Why aren't you just giving the kids textbook questions? And I was mentioning this to a colleague the other day. And I didn't even notice. Some of my students were standing beside us. And they turned and went, no. Don't give us textbook questions. And again, I was like, hey, so they actually like this. This is actually working and engaging them. I love the fact that I have so much more time to have those real-world discussions in the classroom, that I'm not marking and going through textbook questions and, OK, take these notes down and waiting for them to get the notes down. And I've actually got a lot more time in the class to have really, really great discussions. It felt really great when teachers around the province were telling me that they were using my website. And they were using the information that I had made available. One of them said, you should charge for it. And I was like, OK, well, I don't quite know how I'd get them to charge for it. And he's like, you should monetize your YouTube videos. I'm like, yeah, I don't want commercials on my YouTube videos for the kids. But it was just cool that they thought it was valuable. I love the fact that so many of my students are becoming self-reliant and that they're staying engaged, that I have a Facebook page where we paste current events and use that in our current events discussions that is linked to the class website. And I have students who graduated two, three years ago that every once in a while will post something on the page, either a current event or a comment. And to me, that is just so wonderful to have those lifelong learners. And so yeah, hiking is hard. Creating a flipped classroom is hard. But man, is the view at the end so worth it. Thank you. Thank you.